It’s not quite an uphill battle, but with his reelection bid Mike McMahon faces a kind of strange paradox:
How does he remain true to the centrist Democratic principles that made him quite successful as a city councilman on the North Shore, while at the same time appeasing the rest of the borough, which was so eloquently described to us on Fox last week as “not Obama country?”
This negotiation will play itself out over the next seven months, but it leaves the rest of New York City wondering: Why is Staten Island not “Obama country?”
We spoke a little last week about the geographic and cultural isolation of the borough, the overwhelming preponderance of white people on the South Shore, and a particularly vehement hatred for liberal, black politicians (Debi Rose, Al Sharpton, President Obama, Charlie Rangel).
Another question to ask might be: Where do these people get their information from?
Well, primarily Fox News.
Staten Islanders will proudly tell you that they get all their right-wing propaganda from Fox.
“I watch Fox News every night,” a small business owner told me in the heat of the health care debate.
This may seem innocent enough but he wore it like a badge of honor. As if to say, “I know exactly what is going on with this ‘socialist health care scam,’ because I follow it very closely — on Fox News.”
The other trusted news source on Staten Island is it’s only local paper, the tragically sinking ship known as the Staten Island Advance, and its sister site SILive.com.
SILive reposts the Advance ‘news’ and its comment threads are usually littered with right-wing rants that have nothing to do with the substance of said news.
Here’s an enlightening remark about a piece regarding North Shore City Councilwoman, and the Island’s first black politician, Debi Rose.
This is just anonymous online posters, they are not representative of much.
But I wonder if we could somehow poll these people, maybe find out, say, what political fringe they are most associated with.
Oh wait look, they voted on their favorite story of 2009.
Wow, I guess those racist trolls voted on the Tea Party — just an educated guess.
As far as the paper is concerned, the editorial board is, at times, rabidly right-wing.
Here a recent selection from April 13 by Daniel Leddy, a man whose moral compass swings more frequently then a ’70s leisure suit.
The piece is called “A leftist agenda drives smear campaign against Pope Benedict.”
“…the New York Times, which has been spearheading the shameless defamation of Pope Benedict XVI, is a demonstrably and obsessively anti-Catholic publication. Facing bankruptcy and shedding all but the thinnest disguise of responsible journalism, the newspaper struggles to survive by intensifying its long-standing prostitution for left-wing causes.”
Alright, the column argues that the pederasts in the Catholic church are completely not at fault here. (NAMBLA would be proud of this column.) It is all the fault of the New York Times and their “prostitution of left wing causes.” OK…
Well, this is opinion right, the Advance does have ‘straight news.’
A week after the President signed his historic health care reform bill Staten Islanders were comforted to find this piece of ‘news’ in their morning papers:
‘Are there enough doctors in the house?’
“But if all of Staten Island’s 49,000-plus uninsured adults get insurance and start going to the doctor more often,” the newspaper warned, “there may not be enough primary-care physicians here to serve them.”
Sound the alarm bells.
Never mind that Obama’s health care overhaul will dramatically improve the lives of millions who currently do not have insurance. The real issue here is that these uninsured people, most likely poor, and probably black, will be flooding the waiting room at MY doctor’s office.
It’s not surprised that the paper would play this kind of ‘class warfare’ card on dawn of a new age of health care reform. It’s exactly the kind of alarmist bullshit that Staten Islanders have come to expect from their news sources.
The Island, or most of it, has become a vapid echo chamber of right-wing talking points. A two-way dialogue between the ‘man-on-the-street’ or the Tea Party and the Island establishment, or the Richmond County Country Club.
Unless this cycle ends, it won’t become Obama country any time soon.